Des #10: The Long Goodbye

A little context: I watched this week's show in the morning. Full, straight, beautiful summer morning sitting in front of the TV watching a reality romance show. In my nightgown. Not jammies, mind you, which are cute and say "sexy baby." No, a nightgown, which says "Do you need some soup?" Over yoga pants. With milk dribbles on my chin. Surely the fantasy suite dates are meant to allow a beautiful young couple to experience the morning realities and find the confidence to say "Yes, I can do that!" Don't you agree?

I have a valid excuse for the morning TV-watching and dire dress. I have spent the last four months reducing a home and thirty years of family life to this:

There's a reason people don't follow through with that lovely, hazy idea of "simplifying." It's bone-breakingly hard. Take a minute to look around your house and think, "Every item I see is a decision. Every item is something to handle and put somewhere else." Box? Shelf? Give away? Throw away? I'm lucky enough to have a basement to store everything I do decide to keep while we rent out the house and I join my husband who's working in Saudi Arabia, but no one would put as many reps into a stairclimber as I have into those stairs. Monday I finally finished, shoved the last random but necessary loose item into the car, and became homeless for the next three weeks. (I hope. Visa permitting.) I drove nine hours to my daughter's house and collapsed at midnight. Then went to sleep smiling at the prospect of sitting on the sofa with the milk dribbles and the chicken soup nightgown and daytime television. So in the interest of full disclosure, perhaps I'm not in the best place today to feel like The Dilemma of Desiree is that big of a deal.

(I'm also in a poor place to pour a lot of energy into getting and pasting pictures. Sorry.)

And after all the promos, all the hype, all the promises that this was like NO SEASON EVER BEFORE, what is there, really, to talk about? Despite being told at the beginning that we were about to embark on "the television event of the summer," I found the whole thing pretty slow. Kudos to producers on encouraging Des to wear the blue top with the loose waistline that would flutter picturesquely in the breeze while she cried at the end of the dock over the turquoise Antigua water. And in telling her to go there for her cry, rather than into her pillow in the dark.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Des went through the motions (all the motions, as far as I could see) with the other two men, enjoying a drive-to-the-beach vacation day with Drew, then a helicopter date with Chris, both of which ended in invitations to the fantasy suite. Of course, Des got captured on tape at the beginning of the show talking about heading for her "fairytale ending," which is basically the same as somebody saying "I don't see how anything could ruin this date." WARNING to future contestants: If producers are egging you into saying how great you think things are going to turn out, be assured they know something you don't know. Let's remember that they have already accompanied Brooks to Boise for his cold-feet conversation with his mother and sister. They know full well that trouble's a-comin'. And you can be sure those same producers high-fived each other when they got Des to actually say "fairytale ending."

Because yes, between the airing of the other two dates, we got to see that producers arranged for and accompanied Brooks on a trip from Salt Lake to Boise to meet his mother and sister and talk through his doubts. I did love the clarity with which he realized that "the idea of proposing at the end of this makes me uncomfortable." This is actually a sane reaction. It does seem that Brooks is being sold as a terrible guy, because surely no one could fail to love Des, but come on. I'm a little puzzled by his sister confirming his concerns by telling him that "At this point you should know." At what point does she think he is? He's spent private time with this woman...four times? All artificial, all chaperoned by a camera crew. Why can't he just say "I'd like to keep dating her because she seems like a fun girl so far"? Wait--no. Mustn't break the illusion that these dates are Serious and Very Important.

We get a nice snapshot, here, though, of what leads one person into staying with a different wrong person: the idea of breaking up is just too hard. I remember seeing a book author talking about rough starts to marriage, and citing some stunning statistic about the percentage of people married to someone they couldn't bring themselves to break up with. I get it. Most people struggle with short-term pain for long-term gain. I certainly do. My husband, on the other hand, will pour salt on a canker sore, break open a blister, drain an infection. Of course, he never had to do a breakup like this because--ta-da!--he wound up with me, complete with milk dribble and chicken soup nightgown. Lucky man. So after the one stumble, the sister gets it right, advising him that through all the pain and difficulty of a breakup he needs to keep his singular focus on "what's best for her, what's best for you." Drain that wound, buddy. Do it quick.

Unfortunately for us, "do it quick" is where the show failed. The breakup conversation was messy and took a long time, the way real ones do, but I wanted a television breakup. Quick and dramatic. Get out those editing scissors. Instead, we got lots of labored apologies and repetitions about how great Des was and how Brooks wished he could feel more. She, in fact, is better than he is, which she pshaws, but that doesn't seem to convince him to change his mind. ("Wait, you're not better than I am? You're just normal? Well, great then!") My son-in-law Kory, with the wisdom of dudes, identified the tone of the breakup: He's saying all the right things to build her up and make it about some missing magic because he knows he needs to date her friends, which is Des's case is the entire female population of the United States. So be careful how you go about this.

(I hope you noticed that although Brooks felt sure enough about his decision to end the relationship that he didn't want to go on the date, he felt UNSURE enough that he DID need to accept the trip to Antigua. I'm just sayin'.)

Cue a good dock-cry. Brooks, it seems, is the one who has her heart, which is now broken. And we still have TWO HOURS to fill next week. I'm not optimistic, either for Des's prospects or for my desire for high entertainment. I saw an onscreen tweet along the lines that Brooks is Des's Harvard, Drew a solid Ivy-League school, and Chris is her safety school. Does she take one of the backups, or decide to skip school altogether and go join the Peace Corps and stop shaving her legs for a couple of years? And what, oh what, will happen with the visit with her family? Will they encourage her to oh, just pick one and be done with it? Will her brother call up a posse and hunt down Brooks? Hmm. Perhaps there are some possibilities here after all. I'll have my nightgown laid out and ready.